Zen Chess: Mate in Three

'Zen Chess: Mate in Three' is a minimalist chess puzzle game featuring a beautifully designed chess board and pieces, an original soundtrack (specially composed to help you keep your focus and concentration), 100 puzzles, and 10 achievements. Completing the game and unlocking all achievements took me approximately 25 minutes, making it possible to accomplish everything in a single sitting. With a convenient save feature, players can easily resume their progress or start anew, and the game offers unlimited time to reach your goal of solving the 100 mate-in-three puzzles. I would rate its difficulty at 1/10 if you are not a beginner in chess, or 5/10 if you aim to finish the game without any mistakes. If you are a chess enthusiast and have already played 'Zen Chess: Mate in One' and 'Zen Chess: Mate in Two' (which can also be found on Steam), then you also need to play 'Zen Chess: Mate in Three'. Compared to the other two, 'Zen Chess: Mate in Three' doesn't have any graphic or puzzle mistakes. While you can still make impossible moves that will be considered mistakes, everything else works perfectly. The game presents you with 100 carefully selected mate-in-three puzzles that are both challenging and satisfying to solve. Each puzzle is a unique test of your strategic thinking and problem-solving skills, making it a perfect way to sharpen your chess abilities. It also features a clean, minimalist design with a beautifully crafted chess board and pieces. This design choice helps to keep the focus on the puzzles without any unnecessary distractions. Additionally, the original soundtrack is a nice touch, providing a calming background that aids concentration. 'Zen Chess: Mate in Three' is clearly made with care and attention to detail, and this is evident in the overall presentation. The puzzles are engaging and require a good deal of strategic thinking to solve. While the game does not offer any additional features beyond the puzzles and the minimalist presentation, it accomplishes what it sets out to do: provide a focused and pleasant chess puzzle experience. I got this game on sale for 0.54 eurocents, but I think that its initial price is fair as well. Considering all the facts, I would recommend this game to those who want to test or improve their chess skills or to those who want to try new games or are doing playthroughs. If you don't know how to solve a puzzle, you can check out my full game playthrough video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39JxYVoxtj8&ab_channel=Spartakus

Whole series is the same. Decent puzzles marred by a clunky UI. No option to play windowed. Only saves half of your audio preferences (except Mate In One). Only offer about an hour of puzzles each. All feels a bit pointless when there's decent free chess resources all over the web.

Me parece una colección entretenida de problemas y es un buen entrenamiento de táctica que sirve de preparación para la hora de jugar contra un oponente.

Zen Chess: Mate in Three continues in the same vein as its predecessor: it's a nicely presented, chess-themed puzzle game that doesn't know anything about chess beyond the 8x8 grid, the two colours and the shape of the figures. As its puzzle mechanics, all it knows is the initial setup, and the sequence of 5 moves (WBWBW) needed to win - it doesn't even know which figure can make which move, as there's no differentiation between illegal moves and moves that don't get you to the solution. As in ZC:Mi2, this is a big disappointment, and a missed opportunity. Especially because the boards are much better, in general pretty good. There are 100 altogether, and unexpectedly, few of them are endgame - most of them are middle game where White has built a positional and sometimes power advantage, and there are some delicious early game ones where most figures are still on the table and Black almost fully immobilzed its King, and only needs a bit of help to completely lock it and get checkmated. Nice evil stuff :) I was genuinely surprised to see some reviews accusing the game of many boards requiring guessing. No, they don't - you just have to be able to think three moves ahead. There are many boards where the first move is rather inconspicuous, or seemingly stupid - but in every case, it servers to maneuver the Black King into a hopeless position. To me, these are patently good chess puzzles. The other accusation is that some / many boards have multiple valid solutions which the game doesn't allow. I'm not too sure here - whenever I thought of some obvious looking different solution, I was able to verify that it wouldn't work. However, if the game understood chess and made countermoves to every opening, these questions wouldn't even come up... In the end, as the puzzles are generally good and the interface is nice and unobtrusive, ZC:Mi3 is a good puzzle game, just isn't a chess game. Think of it as your Sunday chess puzzle edition in the local paper, which beeps when you think of the wrong move.

More of the same. It's fine for the price.

Ive had glitches where the right move isnt considered the right move by the computer... so this game is useless to me. How can I trust the logic if half the puzzles only work half the time. Ill make the right move, and then try 50 others, come back and it will be accepted suddenly. Its extremely demoralizing.

Just like the other games from the series , good puzzle chess puzzle game. Tho i still wish they made a faster transition between levels. Sometimes the transition is longer than some levels take to solve.

Like the others, this is pretty much "guess what the coder has in mind for a solution". Some of the puzzles have more than one solution but only one works. The game will abruptly reset the board if you didn't make the precisely 'correct' move on any turn. It's like the coder took a bunch of recorded games and made the solution "what was the last three moves?" This would have been much better not only included in a single game (maybe with a combined price as well) but a proper chess engine and an open goal of "force a checkmate in 3 moves". At least it's cheap.

mat w trzech

This is a game for all chess lovers who love to solve chess puzzles.